Hagiography, the historical genre which is the subject of this week's seminar, comprises narratives concerned with the saints and their achievements, especially the miracles which God has performed through them and on their behalf.

There is no acknowledgment—because there is no understanding—that sometimes historical fiction departs from facts in order to reach for more abstract, thematic, or complexly intuitive truths that even the most diligently fact-checked histories and biographies can fail to illuminate.

But concerning some persons of your neighbourhood... their Confession [of Faith] is rather an opinion than a true and sincere earnestness, for all of them are not that which they boast and glory to be; there may be many honest hearts among them; but many of them are only historical and titular, and desire only to show themselves, and to be applauded ...

...No studies have investigated the problem’s historic roots. Thus, this paper explores the perspective of “early insiders” through an historical analysis of autobiographies, biographies, and magazine articles written by and about early US newspaper reporters and editors.

Like many terms that start with a non-silent h but have emphasis on their second syllable, some people precede historical with an, others with a.

Historic and historical are variants of one another and have shared the same meaning (related to history) for much of their history. In present usage, however, a distinction is often made between the two: historic is used as an adjective for the study of history, while historical is used as an adjective for the events of the past. As such, historic is used to describe people, things, and events that are or will be considered important by future historians, while historical is used for people, things, and events in the past, whether important or not. A "historic event" is an important moment past, present, or in the future; a "historical event" is some moment in the past.

However, as regular romance readers know, the romance novels that appear on the best-seller lists are not Harlequins at all, but rather historicals and contemporaries, which vary widely from the Harlequin pattern in style, plot, and character.